True, in exploratory research it is normal that along with your growing understanding, you will want to improve even some of the definitions, but you should anyway try to define them as early as you can. Review the literature Where do I start? Libraries: contacts, Links to useful websites, Systematic reviews A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain period.
A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information.
It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Alternatively, it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. In addition, depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant However, how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?
While the focus of an academic research paper is to support your own argument, the focus of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others.
The academic research paper also covers a range of sources, but it is usually a select number of sources, because the emphasis is on the argument. Likewise, a literature review can also have an "argument," but it is not as important as covering a number of sources.
In short, an academic research paper and a literature review contain some of the same elements. In fact, many academic research papers will contain a literature review section. Why do we write literature reviews? Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic.
If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping-stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field.
Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper's investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers. Chronological If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in , then the book on sperm whales in other art , and finally the biology articles s and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century.
However, there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus. By publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. By trend A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period.
For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre- , , and Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the categories, even though the authors wrote a century apart. Thematic Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review.
For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology. Empiricism is the process of acquiring knowledge directly through observation and experience.
Empiricism also has another The research assistant sat the participants in front of a computer screen and told them that a list of 25 In response to the mood question, a majority of Group A participants said they were happy, a To measure academic performance, he gives the students a midterm essay exam and a final exam.
This is a closed-book exam. There are 6 pages including this one. The exam lasts for minutes plus 30 minutes reading time. Please remember to attempt the easier parts of all the questions. A researcher randomly assigns college students to four groups that differ in the Lopatto has passed on much wisdom, grasshopper. After you enable Flash, refresh this page and the presentation should play.
However, Research Methods questions also come up sprinkled throughout unit 1 and unit 3 so in fact Research Methods is more than twice as important as any other topic and is the key to you doing really well. One of the most difficult types of Research Methods questions are ones where you are asked This exam is closed book, closed notes. You have minutes to complete it. It contains 27 questions and 16 pages including this one , totaling points.
Another common misconception is the expectation that qualitative research will always produce definitive conclusions. In reality, the results will not provide researchers with definitive conclusions, but only with enough information to establish a firm basis for decision making. Trained researchers are essential to the success of qualitative research.
Placed in the hands of untrained researchers, a qualitative research study's chance of success is vastly diminished. When you are ready to pull the trigger on your research study and can't decide which methodology to choose, just remember your axioms. When you want "strength in numbers," choose quantitative research.
When "size doesn't matter," qualitative research is your best bet. Qualitative Research - Key Characteristics Events can be understood adequately only if they are seen in context. The contexts of inquiry are not contrived; they are natural.
Nothing is predefined or taken for granted. Qualitative researchers want those who are studied to speak for themselves, to provide their perspectives in words and other actions. Therefore, qualitative research is an interactive process in which the persons studied teach the researcher about their lives. Qualitative researchers attend to the experience as a whole, not as separate variables.
The aim of qualitative research is to understand experience as unified. Qualitative methods are appropriate to the above statements. There is no one general method. For many qualitative researchers, the process entails appraisal about what was studied. Qualitative research, then, has the aim of understanding experience as nearly as possible as its participants feel it or live it.
This allows the researcher to find issues that are often missed such as subtleties and complexities by the scientific, more positivistic enquiries. Because of the subjective nature of qualitative data and its origin in single contexts, it is difficult to apply conventional standards of reliability and validity.
A numbers-based research discipline, quantitative research statistically measures attitudes, behaviour, and performance and provides results in percentages that are easier to interpret. Utilizing a series of tests and techniques, quantitative research will often yield data that's projectable to a larger population.
Because it is so deeply rooted in numbers and statistics, quantitative research has the ability to effectively translate data into easily quantifiable charts and graphs. Real-world examples have shown the effectiveness of quantitative research in measuring awareness, establishing profiles, and determining future needs. The quantitative paradigm is based on positivism. Science is characterized by empirical research; all phenomena can be reduced to empirical indicators which represent the truth.
The ontological position of the quantitative paradigm is that there is only one truth, an objective reality that exists independent of human perception. Epistemologically, the investigator and investigated are independent entities. Quantitative research consists of those studies in which the data concerned can be analysed in terms of numbers. Quantitative research is based more directly on its original plans and its results are more readily analysed and interpreted. Quantitative research is, as the term suggests, concerned with the collection and analysis of data in numeric form.
However, quantitative research does have its limitations. Large samples are required, and the logistical difficulties inherent in gathering a sufficiently large sample can sabotage the study before it even gets off the ground. Larger samples also tend to be more expensive. Quantitative research, by virtue of its short usually 20 minute interviews and rigid structure, is not the most flexible method of research and, when handled improperly, is especially vulnerable to statistical error.
Quantitative Research - Key Characteristics Control: This is the most important element because it enables the scientist to identify the causes of his or her observations. Experiments are conducted in an attempt to answer certain questions. They represent attempts to identify why something happens, what causes some event, or under what conditions an event does occur.
Control is necessary in order to provide unambiguous answers to such questions. To answer questions in education and social science we have to eliminate the simultaneous influence of many variables to isolate the cause of an effect.
Controlled inquiry is absolutely essential to this because without it the cause of an effect could not be isolated. Operational Definition: This means that terms must be defined by the steps or operations used to measure them. Such a procedure is necessary to eliminate any confusion in meaning and communication. However, stating that anxiety refers to a score over a criterion level on an anxiety scale enables others to realise what you mean by anxiety.
Stating an operational definition forces one to identify the empirical referents, or terms. In this manner, ambiguity is minimised.
Again, introversion may be defined as a score on a particular personality scale, hunger as so many hours since last fed, and social class as defined by occupation. Replication: To be replicable, the data obtained in an experiment must be reliable; that is, the same result must be found if the study is repeated. If observations are not repeatable, our descriptions and explanations are thought to be unreliable.
Hypothesis Testing: The systematic creation of a hypothesis and subjecting it to an empirical test. To decide on the research methodology to use in this research, two critical questions were required to be considered: 1. What type of data was going to be collected for the research? The format in which the research findings were going to be analysed and reported? Apart from the above major two questions, there are other factors to consider when deciding which research methodology to use.
To what extent do you wish to align your own research with standard approaches to the topic? Which approach will produce more useful knowledge? Which will do more good? This may involve paradigm and philosophical issues or different images about what a good piece of research looks like. The question of whether to use quantitative research methodology or qualitative research methodology is commonly asked, especially by beginning researchers.
But when that has been done, and the question still remains, the above factors help in making the decision. Of course, a reasonable decision in any study might be to combine the two approaches. Given the above, Qualitative Research Methodology seemed the most appropriate research methodology to use in this research.
The logic behind using this research methodology is as above and the justification is as follows: Type of Data: the data, which is in the form of information will be collected from research papers, journal articles, web sites, and web blogs using the Internet.
The data collected in the form of information is textual, and thus can be analysed using the qualitative research methodology. To fill the knowledge gap, information was required to be collated, analysed, and conclusions drawn.
Percentage and statistics of quantitative research methodology would make no sense. Study in Detail: to adequately solve the research problem, the situation or phenomena, cloud computing with mobile phones opportunities and issues for developing countries needed to be studied in detail. Qualitative research methodology is most appropriate in such situations.
A quantitative comparison or systematic standardisation would not suffice. Existing Similar Literature: though there were not much research that existed on the similar topic to this research, other researchers on cloud computing had done qualitative research as well.
There is comprehensive literature around that suggests the use of qualitative research methodology in information systems Myers, Cloud computing aligns itself to the field of information systems. Practical Considerations: as this research looked at opportunities and issues of cloud computing with mobile phones in developing countries, time constraints and funding issues would not permit primary investigation and data collection from all developing countries.
However, secondary data in qualitative format was readily available and could be easily accessed via the Internet for this research. Knowledge Acquisition: not much would be learnt through this research from quantitative analysis. But that is not good enough. Qualitative research methodology is the key to know as much as possible.
Availability of Secondary Data: probably another important criterion that made this research use qualitative research methodology would be the abundance of secondary data that was available at the click of a mouse. He also lists the advantages of savings on cost and time, access to quality data that has been tested, access to difficult populations and availability of longitudinal data.
Subject under Study: the researcher is intimately involved in research on cloud computing since it became the buzz word within the IT Industry. He started off by writing research papers on understanding cloud computing, after a series of other research publications on the same topic, found a knowledge gap and narrowed it down to this research dissertation.
Quantitative Research Methodology: however, there are several sections, percentage and statistics provided with the assistance of quantitative analysis to strengthen the case of mobile cloud computing for developing countries. They are planned, scientific, and value-neutral. What that means is that good research methods don't "just happen. It is not necessary that every theory, technique and information in the topic of research is useful for a particular problem. A researcher has to identify and select materials which are useful to his research study.
The function of the research method is to provide for the collection of relevant information with minimal expenditure of effort, time and money. The design of research method, appropriate for a particular research problem, involves the consideration of the following: 1. Objectives of the Research Study; 2. Method of Data Collection to be Adopted; 3. Source of Data or Information; 4.
Tool for Data Collection; and 5. Data Analysis - Qualitative and Quantitative The goal of the research method is to produce new knowledge, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue. This process takes three main forms: Exploratory Research Exploratory research is a type of research conducted for a problem that has not been clearly defined.
Exploratory research helps determine the best research design, data collection method and selection of subjects. It should draw definitive conclusions only with extreme caution. Given its fundamental nature, exploratory research often concludes that a perceived problem does not actually exist. The Internet allows for research methods that are more interactive in nature.
For example, RSS feeds efficiently supply researchers with up- to-date information; major search engine search results may be sent by email to researchers by services such as Google Alerts; comprehensive search results are tracked over lengthy periods of time by services such as Google Trends; and websites may be created to attract worldwide feedback on any subject. The results of exploratory research are not usually useful for decision-making by themselves, but they can provide significant insight into a given situation.
Social exploratory research "seeks to find out how people get along in the setting under question, what meanings they give to their actions, and what issues concern them. The goal is to learn 'what is going on here? Babbie identifies three purposes of social science research. The purposes are exploratory, descriptive and explanatory. Exploratory research is used when problems are in a preliminary stage. Exploratory research is used when the topic or issue is new and when data is difficult to collect.
Exploratory research is flexible and can address research questions of all types what, why, how. Exploratory research is often used to generate formal hypotheses. Skeptics, however, have questioned the usefulness and necessity of exploratory research in situations where priori analysis could be conducted instead Constructive Research Constructive research is perhaps the most common computer science research method. Nevertheless the conclusions have to be objectively argued and defined. Construct can be a new theory, algorithm, model, software, or a framework Empirical Research Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience.
Through quantifying the evidence or making sense of it in qualitative form, a researcher can answer empirical questions, which should be clearly defined and answerable with the evidence collected usually called data.
Research design varies by field and by the question being investigated. Many researchers combine qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis to better answer questions which cannot be studied in laboratory settings, particularly in the social sciences and in education.
In some fields, quantitative research may begin with a research question e. Usually, a researcher has a certain theory regarding the topic under investigation. Based on this theory some statements, or hypotheses, will be proposed e. From these hypotheses predictions about specific events are derived e. These predictions can then be tested with a suitable experiment.
Depending on the outcomes of the experiment, the theory on which the hypotheses and predictions were based will be supported or not. Many researchers and research literature have been found to interchange references and mix definitions and meanings of research methodology, research methods, research design, and research approach.
I have attempted to separate them according to my understanding. Myers and Liu surveyed all the research articles in the AIS basket of six top journals over a ten year period, from to Within this category they classified articles as using the following research methods: survey, case study, laboratory experiment, field experiment, or action research. They describe the five research methods as follows: Survey: Studies employing this research method gather data through the form of questionnaires, which can be paper-based or web-based.
Yin, Laboratory experiment: Studies undertaking laboratory experiments aim for control over the independent variables being measured. Field experiment: As opposed to the controlled environment of a laboratory experiment, field experiments are conducted within a naturally-occurring system.
As such, researchers often do not have control over variables under measurement. Action research: Studies using action research aim to solve a practical problem in the research setting while also contributing to knowledge about the phenomenon. Action research is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice". In social sciences and later in other disciplines, such as information technology, the following two research methods can be applied, depending on the properties of the subject matter and on the objective of the research: Qualitative Research Understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behaviour.
Asking a broad question and collecting word-type data that is analyzed searching for themes. This type of research looks to describe a population without attempting to quantifiably measure variables or look to potential relationships between variables.
The resources need to produce X and Y are twofold, namely machine time for automatic processing and craftsman time for hand finishing. The table below gives the number of minutes required for each item: Machine time Craftsman time. Copyright Abuse.
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